A Lack of Pictures

The past month has been pretty eventful, all things considered.

Back in March I was asked whether I wanted to participate in this year's Creativity and Leadership seminar's for newbie entrepreneurs at my alma mater (the great Oberlinsaurus in the frigid northlands of Ohio). Creativity and Leadership-for those that haven't memorized Skritter's origin story-was the fund that gave us our initial investment. I have been trying to participate in the program as an older entrepreneur as much as possible because I like meeting new founders and I want to give back to the program that made our start possible.

Well, this dovetailed nicely with my new status as a part time contractor at a local web consultancy, so I scheduled two trips, one for the first, and one for the second weekends in April. Little did I realize how much it would wear me down to have no weekends.

On both trips I was very generously hosted with a good friend and fellow collaborator on Skritter. He put me up in his apartment on the south side of campus. On my first visit, I was wined and dined by the President's Advisory Council, I then told the story of my startup and why the fund was so darn awesome. I got free steak and a warm fuzzy feeling from the 6 hours of one way airport travel, and the weather was typically awful. I returned to Raleigh with a sniffle but a newfound interest in owning a PS3 after playing Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (how's that for a title?).

The next weekend, I decided to drive up north because 1) it was slightly cheaper than plane fare and 2) I wanted to stop and visit my parents en route. I made some slight miscalculations about when I had to be in Oberlin, however, so I really only got to spend time with the rents on my way back through the state of Ohio. I did a lot of late night driving and listened to two audio books: All the President's Men and War. Both books are nonfiction, the first is about the Watergate scandal and the second is about what it's like to be a soldier in Afghanistan. Both were pretty solid.

Then last weekend I was again in Ohio, but this time for my brother's college graduation from Wooster College. He graduated with a degree in physics and was appropriately coddled during the weekend festivities. The weather turned out to be pretty oppressive (cold and rainy), but it was definitely worth it to be there for the event. My aunt and uncle from Connecticut came in for the ceremony, as did my dad's dad and mom's mom. It was practically a family reunion. I got to catch up with Pearse and Helen (the cousins) and the grandparent generation. We stayed at a hunting lodge without power or water on the outskirts of Wooster, belonging to a friend of a friend of a colleague of someone I don't know. It was super pretty in the middle of nowhere.

In between the weekends I've been integrating myself into working life at Caktus Consulting. I'm a part time contract project manager, which doesn't afford me much paid time and kinda taxes the flexibility of my schedule. Despite some less-than-perfect aspects to the arrangement, the company is great, I'm doing what I want (project management) and I'm being compensated fairly. Although it would be great to be full time with the cool folks at Caktus, I'll just have to wait and see whether such an offer is forthcoming in July (at the end of my current contract).

This weekend I have blessedly few plans and intend to devote myself to continued GMAT studying, tackling backlog Skritter work, and working on various other personal projects. Becca has kindly arranged a sort of belated "welcome to NC party" for me that will go down on Saturday, so the apartment is going to be cleaned hard, which I'm rather looking forward to.

Oh yeah, and about pictures. I've realized that I haven't taken any pictures for more than 3 months. I have this handy DSLR just sitting here and no inkling to use it. It's dawned on me that I haven't done anything recently I want to take photos of, and this needs to be corrected. Becca and I are looking for a single family home to inhabit for the coming year and I'm hoping this gives me room to do crazy projects in the back yard. Currently I'm interested in creating a huge tarzan swing or perhaps a zip line. Gotta get my crazy on.

Back in the [c]old US of A

So, I got back to the states about 9 days ago, and I've been having a heck of a time getting everything back together. I'm settling into Raleigh, applying to jobs, accomplishing personal goals, joining meetups, compromising with Becca on living situations (ah, the joys of co-existence) and it's only now starting to wind down a bit. All my stuff is still packed away in a temperature-controlled storage unit nearby, but I've got my trusty laptop and my mobile hard drive, both of which I used exclusively in Costa Rica, so I'll be fine until we can arrange for a more permanent living situation.

Costa Rica was fun, but boy am I glad to be back. It could just be nationalism, but it seemed to me that almost everything is better in the states (save the weather). The food is healthier and cheaper, transport is easier and more efficient, consumer goods are of a higher quality and more plentiful, the internet generally works, roads are passable, and the electric stays on most of the time. The impact of language had surprisingly little effect on my day to day happiness. Weather I was hacking together Spanglish sentences or talking in English, a dearth of paper towels appears to frustrate me equally whether I'm in North Carolina or Central America.

I got to surf about 6 times while in Costa Rica, and I got to ride a few small waves standing up, which makes me pretty proud. I saw the rain forests, went zip lining, had a bunch of tasty (and not-so-tasty) food, soaked up the sun (literally, I have a dark tan now), did some hiking (the US has better parks as well), visited with my family and Becca, and now I'm back and trying to create a daily routine which makes me happy. It's surprisingly difficult to build a lifestyle from scratch, but I'm making ridiculously good progress, so here's hoping I'll have reached a sustainable level of social interaction and work in the not-too-distant future.

Quick, look over there!

For the next month or two, I invite readers of this blog (all two of you) to read Scott's blog instead, as he's been quasi-elected our Costa Rica scribe. Regular updates to this blog will begin again upon my arrival back in the states.

Cupcake Eating Competition

It all started with a bet.

Back at the beginning of December, Nick and I were sitting around the Skritter office one evening. He and his girlfriend were using this website Healthmonthly together, and Nick was picking his goals for the next 30 days. After a while, he decided that he was going to go whole hog and created a mega-list of self improvement activities for himself. It read like this:

Read a book for at least 20 minutes 3 days a week.
Walk at least 2 miles a week.
Only eat fried food 1 day a week.
Only eat white flour 2 days a week.
Meditate for 5 minutes at least 6 days a week.
Study Spanish every day.
Go to bed before 11:30pm at least 6 days a week.
Only read hacker news 1 day a week.
Study Chinese every day.
Write 3 pages in a private journal every day.
Exercise for 30 minutes at least 3 days a week.
Only eat white rice 1 day a week.
Only eat pasta 2 days a week.
Get enough Vitamin D every day.
Only eat processed food 1 day a week.
Eat raw nuts, legumes, beans, and seeds every day.
Take a multivitamin every day.
Eat greens every day.
Eat raw fruit every day.

Well, he read it to me and I promptly called bullshit. I mean, look at all that! No way could he maintain all of those goals, especially over Christmas holiday. He said he could do it though and so a bet emerged. The hows and whys of the prizes won't be discussed, but it worked out like this: if he won and completed all the goals for all thirty days without a single exception, I had to compete in a cupcake eating competition with him. If he lost, however, he had to drive up to the candy warehouse up in Cleveland buy me $40 worth of candy.

As the title suggests, he won this bet. Improbably. And so it came to be that I was implicated in the most intense eating challenge I have yet faced. Thinking ahead, Nick sensibly positioned our DSLR on the theater of operations and the following photos were created:

The initial spread. All 6 dozen of the suckers.

Scott has eaten 10 cupcakes and puts on the face to prove it.

Nick hits #10 without slowing.

Scott thinks my nausea is hilarious.

Nick puts on his attractive face for #15.

Scott glories in his fifteenth calorie cake.

I hit critical nausea levels at 15. Nick is unimpressed.

For those of you that don't know Chinese, that's Nick's 20th.

Scott finishes 2nd with 17 cakes. He hides his face in shame behind the guy fawkes mask.

Nick stuff down #25. Good god.

With Scott and I out, Nick just keeps binging. Here he contemplates his incipient fat rolls with #25.

He has suffered dearly, but his efforts yield #30.

Having long since started storing the partially digested cupcakes in his lungs, we see Nick here considering sepuku to end the nausea and shame of his accomplishment: #35.

A stunning success for Nick: 36 cupcakes, 5700 calories, and 36 hours of discomfort are all yours!

I guess we learned a valuable lesson that day: don't challenge Nick to an eating competition.

A New Year's Travel Extravaganza

Christmas and new years have come and gone and much has been done. Here's what has happened:

On the 23rd I traveled from Cleveland to San Antonio to meet Becca's mother's side of the family. Generally things were pretty chill there. I saw True Grit, which was incredible (as I predicted) and much food was consumed. Devin, Rebecca, Kelly (the cousin) and I played a game called Guillotine, which was pretty fun, and Devin and the menfolk (not including myself of course) watched a lot of football and basketball. By the end of the visit I was having trouble determining which sport was which. They all involved overly excited announcers and muscular dudes surrounded by flashy ESPN graphics. I watched a few old movies on my computer in the evening, and all was well.

From San Antonio we traveled to Tampa, and from Tampa to Orlando to visit Universal Studios. I had never been to a Theme park proper, so it was certainly a new experience. Since the only amusement park I've ever frequented is Cedar Point, I had the impression that all theme/amusement parks were essentially an excuse for the owners to build a whole lot of roller coasters. This is wrong. There is an entirely different sort of ride that exists at Theme Parks for which I was unprepared. It's sort of like a combination indoor roller coaster and movie. Universal officially calls them "experiences" not rides, which is somewhat indicative. Some of the rides I believe were engineered solely to cause motion sickness, others were really cool. I liked the Spider Man and MIB rides in particular. I think at heart though I'm a roller coaster fan, so ultimately my favorite ride at the park had to be the newest and biggest steel roller coaster. It was rad.

From Orlando we returned to Tampa where we celebrated New Years in a relaxed fashion and then I flew back to Cleveland after Rebecca's birthday on the 3rd.

Then, on the 8th, I moved out of Oberlin (totally pumped for a change) and put all my belongs into Becca's small apartment down here in Raleigh NC, where I'm going to be based for the predictable future. On Wednesday my brother, father, and I go skiing at Snowshoe in West Virginia (should be good skiing weather) and then on the 20th I head out for 10 weeks in Costa Rica with Nick and Scott via New Yawk. Whoa. So much traveling.

Unfortunately I have very little photographic evidence of all these adventures. I am coming to grips with the fact that the new Nikon D40 is a little less than optimal for situations where I'm on the go. At Orlando, for instance, I would have had to stored it in a locker on each ride (a considerable hassle) and here around NC I find that most of the photos I would like to take are indoors, and the 55mm lens on it only goes down to F4.5, so without a good flash I'm stuck taking 1" exposures which turns everything into artistic-looking blurs. I think I either need a prime lens or a nice flash. Then I can re-evaluate whether the camera is a good.

Anyways, that's a quick update, I'll write a post shortly about Nick, Scott, and my cupcake eating competition when I get some time. We have photos of that!

December

Nothing terribly interesting has happened as late (hence the lack of updates), but the Christmas season and accompanying travel should provide ample experience to cover here.

A quick rundown of what's been up:
1) I continue to work
2) Ohio has been unseasonably cold for this time of year. Scott and Nick are reveling in it. I am freezing my arse off.
3) My parents, brother and I have cemented plans for a downhill ski trip to happen during January.
4) We have our tickets to Costa Rica, and are planning on leaving from New York (tickets are way cheaper from New York for some reason) on the cheapest airline ever conceived by businessmen to San Jose on the 23rd of January.
5) My sweet speakers died about a week back, which is a huge bummer as they had awesome sound quality and cost quite a bit ($150). I have found a replacement, but they're super pricey ($330!) so I gotta wait to replace them.
6) Nick's brother stopped by today and we chatted about (among other things) his friend's 700hp Subaru Impreza WRX STI and how to avoid breaking transmissions.
7) Scott, Nick and I have been playing Minecraft rather obsessively. It's probably not good for us, but I almost can't control it at this point. What makes it so darn appealing? Variable interval, variable rewards. We humans are total addicts for it!

That's it for now, will update again after the holiday madness has died down. Hopefully with pictures!

Thanksgiving

Well, Turkey day came and went. We ate and stayed remarkably busy in the brisk Southeastern Ohio breezes. Here are some photo highlights:

Behold this barn we are in! Behold it!

Discussing what granite counter we're going to put in the house. Alex the granite expert renders his opinion by softly touching each sample.

Playing a friendly game of Pente together. My Dad's all like "yo dawg."

That old saying about too many cooks in the kitchen? Yeah, we don't know it either.

The thanksgiving table moments before consumption. We ate both bottles.

Becca trying to be happy (and pulling it off with relative aplomb) about the wintery weather.

We also visited with the Imhoffs, but I forgot my camera that night, and well, non DSLR-quality photos are so ... plebeian. :)

Now I'm back in Oberlin. Getting ready for a super-productive sprint to Christmas, which will be spent in Texas, Tampa, and Orlando. Carbon emissions are gonna happen. Oh yes.